Credits

George P. Landow, who created the brief chapter summaries above, formatted this text for the Victorian Web using the Project Gutenberg text [eBook #1260; release date April 29, 2007] that David Price transcribed from the 1897 Service & Paton edition.

The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two
with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the
order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence.
Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door: I
feared he would knock — no, but a slip of paper was passed under the door.
I took it up. It bore these words —

"You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little
longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and the
angel's crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day
fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation:
the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak. I shall
pray for you hourly. — Yours, ST. JOHN."

"My spirit," I answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right; and my
flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when
once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be
strong enough to search — inquire — to grope an outlet from this cloud of
doubt, and find the open day of certainty."

It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain
beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and St. John pass
out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He took
the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross — there he
would meet the coach.

"In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin," thought
I: "I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to see and
ask after in England, before I depart for ever."

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in
walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had
given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I
had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable
strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence
it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me — not in the external
world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression — a delusion? I could
not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous
shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations
of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell
and loosed its bands — it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it
sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my
startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which
neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of
one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous
body.

"Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will know
something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters
have proved of no avail — personal inquiry shall replace them."

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey,
and should be absent at least four days.

"Alone, Jane?" they asked.

"Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some
time been uneasy."

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had
believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often
said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from
comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to
travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied, that nothing ailed
me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no
inquiries — no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not
now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the
silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of free
action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and soon after four I stood at
the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach
which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those
solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great
distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one
summer evening on this very spot — how desolate, and hopeless, and
objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered — not now obliged to
part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more
on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross
on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the
coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst
of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills
(how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern North-
Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a once
familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure
we were near my bourne.

"How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the ostler.

"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields."

"My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the coach,
gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till I called for
it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the brightening
day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, "The
Rochester Arms." My heart leapt up: I was already on my master's very
lands. It fell again: the thought struck it: —

"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you
know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten,
who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do
with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost
your labour — you had better go no farther," urged the monitor. "Ask
information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek:
they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if
Mr. Rochester be at home."

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on
it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong
doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the
ray of her star. There was the stile before me — the very fields through
which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury
tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I
well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them.
How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch
the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed
single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between
them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke
the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened.
Another field crossed — a lane threaded — and there were the courtyard
walls — the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. "My
first view of it shall be in front," I determined, "where its bold
battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out
my master's very window: perhaps he will be standing at it — he rises
early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in
front. Could I but see him! — but a moment! Surely, in that case, I
should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell — I am not certain.
And if I did — what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt
by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps
at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the
tideless sea of the south."

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard — turned its angle:
there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone
pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep
round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with
precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet
drawn up: battlements, windows, long front — all from this sheltered
station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey. I
wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very careful
and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless. A
peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a
straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the
great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it. "What
affectation of diffidence was this at first?" they might have demanded;
"what stupid regardlessness now?"

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a
glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the
grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses — fancying she has stirred: he
withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again
advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he
lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty — warm,
and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance!
But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps
in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his
finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it
wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears
to waken by any sound he can utter — by any movement he can make. He
thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened
ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed! — to peep up at chamber
lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for
doors opening — to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The
lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The
front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a well-like wall, very
high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows: no roof,
no battlements, no chimneys — all had crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome
wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received
an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle. The
grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen — by
conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this disaster?
What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it?
Had life been wrecked as well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful
question: there was no one here to answer it — not even dumb sign, mute
token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated
interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late
occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void arch,
winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the
drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and
weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh!
where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under
what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower
near the gates, and I asked, "Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the
shelter of his narrow marble house?"

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but
at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought
my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit
down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely
knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet
the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for
a tale of misery. The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.

"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?" I managed to say at last.

"Yes, ma'am; I lived there once."

"Did you?" Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.

"I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler," he added.

The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been
trying to evade.

"The late!" I gasped. "Is he dead?"

"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father," he explained. I
breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words
that Mr. Edward — my Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he was!) — was
at least alive: was, in short, "the present gentleman." Gladdening
words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come — whatever the
disclosures might be — with comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in
the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the
Antipodes.

"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing, of
course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the
direct question as to where he really was.

"No, ma'am — oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a
stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last
autumn, — Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about
harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable
property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The fire
broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote,
the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle: I
witnessed it myself."

"At dead of night!" I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality
at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" I demanded.

"They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was
ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware," he continued,
edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, "that there
was a lady — a — a lunatic, kept in the house?"

"I have heard something of it."

"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am: people even for some
years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they
only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what
she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought
her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress. But a
queer thing happened a year since — a very queer thing."

I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the
main fact.

"And this lady?"

"This lady, ma'am," he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester's wife!
The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a young
lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in — "

"But the fire," I suggested.

"I'm coming to that, ma'am — that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The
servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was
after her continually. They used to watch him — servants will, you know,
ma'am — and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him
thought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing, they say,
almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I've heard Leah, the
house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was
about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen
of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were
bewitched. Well, he would marry her."

"You shall tell me this part of the story another time," I said; "but now
I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire. Was
it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?"

"You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, and nobody but
her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs.
Poole — an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one
fault — a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons — she kept a
private bottle of gin by her , and now and then took a drop over-much. It
is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous;
for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad
lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her
pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house,
doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had nearly
burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don't know about that. However,
on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her
own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way to the
chamber that had been the governess's — (she was like as if she knew
somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her) — and she kindled
the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The
governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester
sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the
world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage — quite
savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got
dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs.
Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did
it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she
deserved it — she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward he had, was
put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut
himself up like a hermit at the Hall."

"What! did he not leave England?"

"Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of
the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the
grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses — which it is my
opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was
before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma'am. He
was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was
not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever
man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often
wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to
Thornfield Hall."

"Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?"

"Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning
above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them
down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And
then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was
standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till
they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes.
She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming
against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several more
witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we
heard him call 'Bertha!' We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she
yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the
pavement."

{The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement: p413.jpg}

"Dead?"

"Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were
scattered."

"Good God!"

"You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!"

He shuddered.

"And afterwards?" I urged.

"Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are
only some bits of walls standing now."

"Were any other lives lost?"

"No — perhaps it would have been better if there had."

"What do you mean?"

"Poor Mr. Edward!" he ejaculated, "I little thought ever to have seen it!
Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage
secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I
pity him, for my part."

"You said he was alive?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead."

"Why? How?" My blood was again running cold. "Where is he?" I
demanded. "Is he in England?"

"Ay — ay — he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy — he's a
fixture now."

What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.

"He is stone-blind," he said at last. "Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr.
Edward."

I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to
ask what had caused this calamity.

"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way,
ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else was out before
him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester
had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash — all
fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a
beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was
knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to
amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that
also. He is now helpless, indeed — blind and a cripple."

"Where is he? Where does he now live?"

"At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off:
quite a desolate spot."

"Who is with him?"

"Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken
down, they say."

"Have you any sort of conveyance?"

"We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise."

"Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to
Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice the hire
you usually demand."